From Hegemony to Transatlantic Tax Battle?

This chapter discusses the most recent developments in transatlantic bargaining over countermeasures to financial secrecy and corporate profit-shifting, and sketches several future scenarios based on the theory developed in Chapter 2. It shows that dissatisfaction with nonreciprocal automatic exchange of information (AEI) and the BEPS project's failure to limit tax avoidance in the common market has motivated the European Commission and several member states to push for a common reaction. The European Union has since produced an integrated blacklist of third countries not complying with its tax good governance standards and ordered several member states to claw back taxes lost to sweetheart deals granting selective advantages to individual firms. Moreover, finance ministers debate the introduction of a digital services tax and a common consolidated corporate tax base to curb profit-shifting in the common market. Finally, the chapter presents some overall conclusions drawn from the research presented in this volume.

The Emergence of Multilateral AEI

This chapter explains that the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) has its origins in the longstanding efforts of anti-tax haven activists within the Democratic Party. These activists utilized testimony from a whistleblower and a former Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) private banker to prepare a report on the bank's illegal offshore business with US clients. To increase publicity, they held a corresponding Senate hearing, which eventually triggered the UBS scandal. Shortly afterward, Barack Obama entered office. The scandal, his cordial relationship with Democratic anti-tax haven activists, and personal interest in the issue made combating tax evasion and avoidance a top priority for his administration. In contrast to proposed anti-avoidance measures potentially affecting US multinationals, legislation requesting more transparency from foreign banks serving US clients easily passed Congress. The result was FATCA, a law threatening foreign financial institutions unwilling to report account data of US clients with a 30 percent withholding tax on payments from US sources.

Countering Harmful Tax Practices

This chapter shows that the Clinton administration promoted an international campaign against underregulated financial centers. It did so because it was concerned about the impact of tax havens on the perceived fairness of the US tax system, international financial stability, and the US sanctions regime. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), however, made the strategic mistake to tackle tax evasion by individuals and tax avoidance by multinationals in a single project, creating opposition from business associations in the United States and elsewhere. Instead of credibly linking noncompliance with OECD recommendations to economic sanctions, the Clinton administration thus accepted the severe dilution of the harmful tax competition initiative's anti-avoidance elements even before the Bush administration took office in 2001. A nested comparison of two unilateral tax initiatives moreover reveals that the Clinton administration generally failed to pass regulations curbing tax avoidance but succeeded in passing regulations against tax evasion.

Power in International Tax Politics

This chapter develops a theory of power in international tax politics. This theory identifies market size and regulatory capacity as the decisive resources enabling governments to issue credible threats and inducements with a view toward making other governments do what they would not otherwise do. A lack of regulatory capacity explains why the European Union has not wielded the same power in negotiations over global tax policy as the United States despite the EU's similarly sized internal market. In fact, taxation remains an exclusive member state competence. Therefore, the European Commission has no administrative authority to impose penalties on third states or foreign firms not complying with tax good governance standards applicable within the union. At the same time, the principle of nondiscrimination enshrined in EU law prevents individual EU countries from passing sanctions against other member states abetting tax evasion and avoidance. Because of the lack of regulatory centralization in the EU, the US can act as a hegemon in international tax politics. Accordingly, US preferences determined by domestic politics decisively shape the content of global tax policy. The preferences of other governments merely affect the US administration's enforcement strategy.

Change and Stability in Global Tax Policy

This chapter takes a look at the ability of a great power like the United States to unilaterally effect fundamental change in international tax policy through coercion. It first shows that the structural constraints precluding a common interest in countermeasures to tax evasion were still in place when the US Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Second, the chapter reveals that there was no need for normative change, because regulative norms have never consistently prevented the United States from interfering with the legal systems of tax havens. From there, the chapter considers when a great power like the United States can effect fundamental change in international tax policy and the domestic tax policies of less powerful countries through coercion. It argues that a government reaches great power status if it controls an internal market large enough to reduce its dependence on international trade and investment relative to the government's negotiating partners and uses its regulatory capacity to effectively restrict market access for foreign firms or investors.